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True Fasting

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After Medina and Mecca became adversaries, while the Prophet was living in Medina, and Mecca kept attacking Medina, an Arab came to the Prophet and said to him, “Place a curse on the Arabs in Mecca.”

And the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, responded, “I did not come into this world as a curse, I came as a mercy.”

Now, that understanding, is at the core of understanding Haqq, understanding reality, understanding the truth, and understanding the true impact and import of religion. It is meant to be a mercy for people in this world; it is not meant to be anything other than that. It is meant to help, aid, and assist.

At this time we are beginning the holy month and Ramadan, and one of the pillars of Islam is fasting, and Ramadan is when the fasting takes place. During this month it’s a half-day fast, of course in the summer months it lasts a little longer than a half-day, but one of the points of fasting is that we make a conscious effort to detach ourselves from worldly things.

Fasting, is not just not eating; fasting is detaching yourself from everything that’s not merciful. So we don’t eat, and that’s part of the understanding, but as our teacher said, “If you can’t fast from anger, Allah does not need you to fast from food.”

So during this time, during this holy month, we should be thinking about what it is that we should be fasting from, what it is that we are attached to that we need to release from our being. How do we become pure and clean, and how do we release ourselves from the temptations of the world, and the intoxicants of the world? How do we release ourselves from the magnetisms and the hypnotisms of the world that draw us and bring us into relationships with the world as opposed to a relationship with Allah?

This is difficult for people in this modern age to understand that there was a time when Allah came first to people in the world, that Allah was the most important thing for them in the world. At the time of the Prophet, the influence of the Prophet was so powerful and so strong to the people in his vicinity that they almost automatically became more and more devout, and more and more inclined towards God.

It was the same for us during the time when Bawa was here. We would, whenever we could, find a way to be close to him, because by being close to him we became closer to reality…